James Bond's Boozing Would Kill Him By Age 56

James Bond is a category 3 drinker according to a new study in the British Medical Journal. The results are parsed here in an infographic called The Man With the Golden Liver.

Since his first appearance in Casino Royale in 1953, secret agent James Bond has been boozing hard. This hasn’t stopped him from fronting the second-highest grossing film series in history. But science, a notorious party-crasher, now reveals that if Bond were a real human instead of an invincible symbol of masculinity, he’d be a severe alcoholic, dead at age 56.

Along with his colleagues at Nottingham University Hospital, liver specialist Dr. Indra Neil Guha studied 12 of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels and gathered data on the spy's drinking habits. The results of this research, published in the British Medical Journal and visualized here in an infographic by Makovsky Integrated Communications, show that Bond is a category 3 drinker. He consumed an average of 92 alcohol units per week, or six to seven drinks a day. That’s more than four times England’s recommended amount and would leave him at high risk for depression, cirrhosis of the liver, and hypertension.

"Ideally, vodka martinis should be stirred, not shaken," the researchers report in the British Medical Journal’s Christmas issue. "That Bond would make such an elementary mistake in his preferences seemed incongruous with his otherwise impeccable mastery of culinary etiquette." They suspect another reason forced him to shake his cocktails: "James Bond was unlikely to be able to stir his drinks, even if he would have wanted to, because of likely alcohol-induced tremor," the researchers write.

The shitfaced spy would have also had a hard time steadying his Beretta. Word-slurring would replace sharp-shooting. His memory for poker numbers would have been pickled. And all this boozing would likely have caused sexual dysfunction, "which would considerably affect his womanizing," the study notes.

The researchers understand that Bond is a pretty stressed out dude, saying, "We appreciate the societal pressures to consume alcohol when working with international terrorists and high-stakes gamblers." But they still politely urge him to lay off the sauce: "We would advise Bond be referred for further assessment of his alcohol intake and reduce his intake to safe levels."